The (Board) Gamer’s Guide to Supply Management Part XXVII: At the Gates of Loyang Part I

It’s 28 AD and Luoyang is the newly declared capital of the (Eastern) Han Dynasty and the new focal point of trade in eastern China (and will soon become one of the four great capitals of old China). (In fact, in 40 years time, the White Horse Temple, which will be the first Buddhist temple in China, will be established under the patronage of Emperor Ming.) The economic upturn of the now-flourishing city requires a better supply of basic foodstuffs. These are provided by the local farmers who plant wheat, pumpkins, turnips, cabbage, beans, and leeks in their fields.


After each harvest, the farmers assemble at the gates of Loyang to sell and trade their vegetables. They deliver to their regular customers or lucratively sell their vegetables to passing shoppers. Vegetables can also be traded at Market stalls or used for seed and planted in fields. If the farmers need vegetables that they don’t have in stock, they can buy them in the Shop. Twenty different helpers, each with different individual skills, are available to assist them.


The most successful farmer (and the victor) will be the one who moves furthest along the Path of Prosperity within the given timeframe.


Each step costs more and more money, which is also needed for investments. Farmers have to find the right balance. The coins have square holes, so they can be held on strings. They have the Chinese name “Cash”, which is the derivative of the modern term.

At the Gates of Loyang is an economic farming game for 1 to 4 players (that plays best with 2 or 4 players) set in ancient China where success depends on your ability to not only grow vegetables and service your customers, but on your ability to trade for what you don’t have to service new customers when the opportunity arises and on your ability to gain wealth. (In the Han Dynasty, a total assessed taxable wealth of one hundred thousand coins was a prerequisite for holding office, which is why many who needed additional funds for education or political office found farming a decent profession because, while humble, it was not looked down upon by fellow gentrymen. Plus, the Han court upheld a socio-economic ranking system for commoners and nobles that allowed all non-male slave commoners to be promoted in rank to level eight, which entitled the individual to a annual salary of 400 bushels, 8 times that of the level one gentleman commoner. However, the government often sold ranks to collect more revenues for the state. This is the inspiration for the path of prosperity — in Loyang, when you are buying your way along the path of prosperity, you are buying rank.)

In addition, success depends on your ability to choose the right actions at the right time, with limited resources. In particular, many actions require Cash, of which you have a limited amount, and serving customers requires crops, of which you can produce at most one in the first round, three in the second round (if you are fortunate enough to acquire an extra field as you are only guaranteed to acquire one new field each turn), five in the third round, and so on, to a maximum of 13 in the 7th round — but only if you have money for seed – on average, you’ll be lucky to have more than 7 active fields mid-way to late in the game. (But only if you can acquire enough fields to plant, and harvest, more than one crop.)

In Loyang, you start the game with 10 Cash, 1 field, 1 storehouse, 1 cart, and access to a shop with 11 vegetables (consisting of 3 wheat, 2 pumpkins, 2 turnips, 2 cabbages, 2 beans, and 2 leeks) that only you can sell to or buy from (to seed fields or satisfy customers) during the game (unless you play with the nine lantern helpers). While playing the game, you will acquire regular customers (which must be satisfied four times, in four consecutive turns, or you lose favour and possibly even Cash), one-time customers which can be satisfied at a time of your choosing, (one-time) helpers that give you temporary advantages, and access to new market stalls (that only you can trade with, unless another player has access to a special helper). In each turn, you will perform actions in an attempt to maximize your Cash so you can advance further up the path of prosperity than your peers.

Each round of the game has 3 phases:

1. Harvest Phase
a) Each player turns over the top field from his private field stack, which he can use to plant more crops.
b) Each player harvests exactly one vegetable from each planted field that has a vegetable for harvest.
c) Each newly emptied field is remove from the game (to simulate the need for a field to lie fallow on a regular basis).

2. Card Phase
a) Each player receives a hand of 4 Action cards.
b) The distribution round begins.
i) Each player*1, in turn, places one card from her hand into the “Courtyard” until
ii) One player takes exactly one card from the “Courtyard” and one card from her hand for her play area. Then
iii) Each remaining player does the same, placing any remaining cards into the Courtyard until all players have placed two cards, then the remaining cards are discarded.

The cards available will be:

  • extra fields (6) which cost 2 Cash to buy but allow you to plant more vegetables
  • regular customers (14) which require a delivery each round, or, after you miss one delivery, demand 2 Cash reimbursement for each successive delivery missed
  • casual (one-time) customers (14) which have a specific order, but who will wait as long as necessary without penalty
  • market stalls (14) that will have three vegetables you can trade one or two of your vegetables for
  • helpers (13 non-lantern/22 in total) that will help you (once) with special abilities

3. Action Phase

If the nine (9) lantern helpers, which take actions that affect other players, are not used, then each player may perform her action phase simultaneously. Otherwise, each player will perform her phase sequentially (beginning with the starting player, which is the last player to place two action cards in the previous round). In the action phase, each player performs as many of the following actions as many times as she likes (with the exception of purchasing a “two-pack”) in any order:

  • Sow Vegetables (as Seed)
    by taking one vegetable from your cart and placing it on an empty field (which will be filled with vegetables of the same type from the global Supply).
  • Buy Vegetables (from the shop)
    and place them in your cart, by paying the (total) purchase price.
  • Sell Vegetables (to the shop)
    by taking the vegetables from your cart and adding them to the shop (for the selling price).
  • Trade Vegetables at a Market Stall
    by trading one or two vegetables from your cart for one vegetable in the stall.
  • Play or Discard a Helper
    and use the helper’s ability if desired.
  • Deliver to a Regular Customer
    with vegetables from your cart or storehouse.
  • Deliver to a Casual Customer
    with vegetables from your cart or storehouse
  • Take a Loan
    that provides a player with 5 Cash, but that also results in the player moving backwards 1 space along the Path of Prosperity at the end of the game
  • Buy a Two-Pack
    of action cards using your Cash and keep up to 2 of them for your use.

Then, at the end of the action phase, a player:

  • must store any remaining vegetables left in her cart in her storehouse (which can hold one vegetable at the start of the game, or 4 if upgraded for 2 Cash) or, if insufficient room, sell them to the stop or, if insufficient room, discard them
  • may pay to move along the path of prosperity; the first space in each round costs 1 Cash, but each successive space costs Cash equivalent to the value of the space (and moving to space 4 costs 4, to space 5 costs 5, etc.)

The economic trade-offs make the game quite challenging, just like a value-add trade negotiation between multiple potential suppliers in the real world. You want to acquire more regular customers (that can provide you with up to 34 Cash over 4 rounds and advance you quickly up the path of prosperity), but, as each regular customer requires two vegetables, each regular customer requires you to acquire and plant additional fields to meet their needs, and this requires up-front Cash. You can always take a loan, but each loan sets you back one step on the path to prosperity. On the other hand, you can take a casual approach and try to satisfy only casual customers with whatever you have, by occasionally trading for what you need, but if your livelihood is dependent upon casual customers, they quickly become aware of this fact and haggle you down (and they become less lucrative as they pay 2 less Cash). (Casual Customers are more lucrative if you have more regular customers as they will pay 2 more Cash in this situation.) You also want to make sure you have exclusive trading access to the right market stalls as it’s unlikely that you’ll always have what your customers want (as you generally can’t produce all six vegetables at one time until late in the game), but for every market stall you acquire access to, you sacrifice a potential customer, helper, or field. Acquiring available helpers (such as the Haggler, who will let you buy a vegetable 2 for 1 or the Harvest helper, who will let you harvest 2 vegetables from each of your fields instead of 1 in a round where you need extra vegetables) can also be very beneficial, but only if you get them at the right time as you are again sacrificing a potential customer, field, or market stall to acquire this helper.

At the Gates of Loyang is a great economic strategy game that will have you donning your thinking cap and wearing out your thinking chair in no time at all. As such, it’s a great way to keep those strategic thinking and planning skills sharp. Even true “Masters” of the game only reach jade stone 19 on the 20 stone path to prosperity! And that is truly a rare occurrence (just like only true Sourcerors beat the best-price model generated by a detailed market-driven optimized should-cost model).

Come back for Part II where we will provide a solo walkthrough of the game in preparation for a more detailed analysis of the game and the trade-offs that one will face in Part III, which will demonstrate why strategic, economic worker-placement/tile-placement/trading games are a great way to keep your strategic analysis skills sharp and maybe even learn how to analyze situations in new ways as we will demonstrate in Part IV that analysis works when we replay the game in Part II with new insights and do better. If soccer is not distracting you, take the time to work through this intense series — we need all the brain training we can get in our field!


I want to plant
I want to trade
I want to walk down the path
That’s covered in jade
I want to go out
And trade the grain
At the Gates of Loyang

*1 In a two-player game, each player may turn over a card from the top of the deck to add to the courtyard to increase the options available.

The (Board) Gamer’s Guide to Supply Management Part XXVI: Interlude or Why You Need to Game More to Add More Game To Your Sourcing Skills, Part II

In our last post we noted that Sourcing, like many facets of Supply Management, is not as easy as it seems. The skills required are numerous and sophisticated, not easy to come by, and not easy to advance. For example, analysis and trend identification requires advanced mathematical skills; logistics, resource management, and project management requires the ability to not only apply the mathematical skills acquired for analytics to evaluate trade-offs with respect to quantitative and qualitative advantages but to model physical, financial, and information supply chains; and needs identification and negotiation requires sophisticated collaborative skills.

We also noted that these skills need to be practiced if they are to be honed and improved, but that, outside of the job, you have limited opportunity to practice these skills. And while it’s okay to practice these skills on low-dollar, non-strategic categories where a few extra points is not going to add much to the total cost of the buy, you don’t want to be honing your skills on a large multi-million dollar strategic category where a few points translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more, in losses.

That’s where gaming comes in. Strategic European worker placement / pick-up and delivery / tile placement / economic / resource management games give you a great opportunity to practice your skills in a competitive, but non-threatening, forum where the worst that can happen is you come in last in a friendly game with your peers and maybe have to pick up the tab for the “refreshments” consumed during the game as your punishment. Then you get to sit back and think about where your strategy failed, analyze your choices versus the alternatives, and develop new insights and new strategies for the next game.

Moreover, if you’re willing to track down your local Euro-Gaming store, or patronize one or more of a dozen plus online storefronts*, you can acquire games that can help you work on just about any sourcing, procurement, and logistic skill that you can think of. Even if we limit ourselves to the handful of games already covered in this series, we can see how we can improve each of the skills identified in our last post.

  • Analysis
    Agricola and Le Havre in particular require considerable analysis. There are a multitude of options but in each step you can only take a limited number of actions, which is the best one?
  • Logistics
    The Village and The Settlers of Catan require complicated logistics — you have to acquire goods to reach cities or trade them at the market in the former and build roads, and ships, to reach new locales in the latter.
  • Needs Identification
    In Agricola, All Creatures Big and Small, Le Havre, and the Inland Port you need specific resources to acquire animals, buildings, etc. which represent more value to you than the resources you trade.
  • Negotiation
    in Munchkin, you get to choose whether you help or hurt your opponent, and that usually depends on negotiation. Furthermore, you have to collectively decide in Castle Panic the best course of action.
  • Project Management
    In addition to The Village, Camelot, Carcassone, and Upon a Salty Ocean require significant project management skills as The Village is taking place over generations of workers and each worker can only complete so many tasks before his or her time is up (literally), Camelot is building a castle with a limited set of tiles over multiple rounds, and if projects (roads, towns, and farms) aren’t completed quickly enough in Carcassone, then you lose everything you put into the project.
  • Resource Management
    In Agricola, Le Havre, The Village, and similar games, the same resources are needed to acquire buildings, equipment, and livestock that contribute to your overall wealth and determine whether you win or lose the game.
  • Supplier Identification
    In OddVille and The Builders, you have to draft your workforce, and the skills required are similar to the skills required to identify good suppliers.
  • Trend Identification
    What are your opponents doing? What resources or buildings are they focussing on? What are they likely to do next? What does this leave for you? And what can you do to make the most of this?

In other words, its a great way to hone the skills you need to succeed in your Supply Management job without putting (millions of) dollars at risk. So that’s why, in addition to continuing to review relevant games that you can use to hone your skills (to make sure you find the game that’s right for you), SI is going to show you how to apply, and hone, your analytical skills to, and in, these games, starting with a multi-part series on a great Euro-game by Uwe Rosenberg that lends itself, with a few slight modifications, to solo-play, which allows us to test our theory that analysis will not only improve our game, but hone our skills at the same time.

That means the two-thirds of you who aren’t watching soccer up to 12 hours a day and who take the time to try and follow these long, in-depth, posts, will be a few yards ahead of your peers by the time the World Cup Ends next month, and maybe even a bit of a Dunny rat.

* If you live in Canada, there’s a list of on-line board game stores in the Great White North on the HRM Gamers Alliance. [Note: site is now archived and only the game store list is updated periodically]

The (Board) Gamer’s Guide to Supply Management Part XXV: Interlude or Why You Need to Game More to Add More Game To Your Sourcing Skills, Part I

Sourcing, like many facets of Supply Management, is not as easy as it seems. The skills required to identify the products and services required, identify potential suppliers, construct an appropriate RFI, evaluate that RFI, construct an appropriate RFP, evaluate that RFP, identify suppliers for negotiations/RFQ, assess the market, assess the RFQ responses against the market, select one or more finalists, negotiate, define the award, create a contract, and manage the whole process are quite numerous. Especially since that’s just the basic process. A determination of demand, of current market conditions, of expected cost, etc. will require spend analysis, (should-cost) modelling, and (statistical) trend projection. If multiple bids are competitive, and an auction is out of the question, then (strategic sourcing) decision optimization, and the mathematical modelling it entails, is also required. Plus, if the buy is strategic, then multiple stakeholders will be involved and cross-functional team-management skills will also be required. All this, and more, may be required just to get to a contract.

Then comes the actual Procurement. This will involve considerable skills in logistics, inventory, and global trade. When do you place the order? What is the best mode of transportation? Do you cross-dock or not? If the inventory is available too early, do you store it over-seas, before export, or locally, after import. If there are value-add components, do you take them or leave them, as they can considerably increase import or export tariffs? For example, sometimes the difference between shipping a cartridge in a printer and shipping it separately will save a few percentage points off of the total cost. (Check the HTS codes if you don’t agree.)

So, to re-iterate, you need the following skills at a minimum:

  • (Cost) Analysis / Market Analysis
    What are the current market conditions, what is the expected or best cost, etc.
  • Logistics
    What is the best method of transportation and how do you time it to optimize costs and revenues, etc.?
  • Needs Identification
    What do you need, when, and are there alternatives, etc.?
  • Negotiation
    What do you offer? What’s your minimal viable alternative? etc.
  • Project Management
    How do you balance your resources (time, money, talent) to achieve the goal? etc.
  • Resource Management
    What’s the best use of your limited resources? When do you buy and sell? etc.
  • Supplier Identification
    Which suppliers want to supply you? Which suppliers are acceptable to you? etc.
  • Trend Identification / Projection
    Are demands going to increase, decrease, or stay the course? etc.

These skills are not easy to come by and not easy to advance. For example:

  • Analysis
    requires mathematical skills and training
  • Logistics
    requires cost analysis and network modelling skills and training
  • Needs Identification
    requires the ability to elicit details from both analyses and stakeholders
  • Negotiation
    requires training and people skills
  • Project Management
    requires knowledge and training
  • Resource Management
    requires strong analysis skills and an understanding of the inherent value and limitations of each resource
  • Supplier Identification
    requires the ability to assess a supplier across multiple dimensions and know what those dimensions should be
  • Trend Identification
    requires analysis, statistical training, and an instinct for the right questions

But when do you practice them outside the job? About the only time you’ll practice analysis at any level of sophistication outside the job is when you are buying a house or a car, which is a rare occurrence. You don’t practice global logistics at home. Needs identification is limited to you(r family’s) needs, not a multitude of stakeholders across multiple departments. Negotiation is limited to bargaining with your kids to do their chores. Project Management is really time management to fit all the family activities in. Resource Management is practiced daily, but at a much smaller scale. Supplier Identification is limited to (online) store identification when you need something, and trend identification doesn’t really enter into the picture.

But gaming changes the scenario.

Turbulence, Not Just for Airplanes Anymore!

Turbulence, a flow regime characterized by chaotic property changes, that occurs regularly in the earth’s atmosphere and makes for bumpy air travel when encountered, is not just restricted to air. It’s commonly found in water as well, when the oceanic currents mix, causing rough times for many a seafaring ship.

And when you consider that one of the most common causes is the rapid variation of pressure and velocity in space and time you see that it’s not even restricted to fluid dynamics. The general concept extends to the flow of physical goods and of virtual information when that flow, seemingly regular under normal circumstances, becomes highly irregular with the slightest perturbation.

Turbulence is a hidden risk in every supply chain, and one most organizations are never prepared for because, when a risk assessment is done, it is always focussed on easy-to-identify technological, economic, market, financial, organization, environmental and social risks — not random events that can temporarily interrupt your supply chain and cause temporary disruptions with serious financial or brand consequences. Temporary disruptions which, if regular in nature, can put your organization in real jeopardy and temporary disruptions, which, by their very nature cannot be planned for or even identified in an up-front risk assessment.

For example, when buying product components from China, an experienced risk team is going to identify:

  • Supplier Risk
    Are they financially stable? Will they adequately protect your IP? etc.
  • Factory Risk
    Is the quality acceptable? Are there workplace or safety hazards that could shut it down?
  • Port Risk
    Will the product be safe? Is there any danger of strike or overcapacity? On both sides …
  • Export and Import Risk
    Are all regulations adhered to? RoHS? WEEE? Has all the paperwork been completed and submitted on time?
  • Technology Risk
    Is the real-time product tracking and distribution system reliable? Backed Up? Integrated properly with all parties?
  • Environmental
    Is the product being made or stored in areas subject to regular natural disasters such as hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, etc.?
  • Social Responsibility
    Is the product conflict / slave labour free? Are all employees of all partners treated equitably? Is the product, and its production, environmentally friendly or at least environmentally safe? Can the product be safely disposed of?
  • Market
    Will the market still want your product when it is available? Is a competitor going to beat you to the market?
  • Economic
    Will the economy maintain or improve? Or will it worsen, leading to reduced demand across the board? What is the job forecast looking like in target markets – job loss in those areas can weaken consumer demand.

and a few dozen other common risks from the risk identification and management playbook. But it’s not going to identify one-time random events such as:

  • Unlikely Terrorist Attack by a random civilian who goes postal and, when trying to go postal, thanks to a gas leak, accidentally blows up a building due near the docks and causes the port to become unaccessible for 3 days
  • Delayed Delivery due to Paperwork Mix-Up
    One truck is scheduled for delivery of your product to your distribution warehouse, another for mid-term storage at a competitors warehouse on the other side of the continent. And because the small carrier you’re using doesn’t have real-time inventory tracking, and your product is schedule for JIT delivery, the mix-up isn’t detected until the expected delivery date when your product is half-way across the country.
  • False Stock-Out due to Inventory Mis-Key
    The clerk enters 8,000 units instead of 80,000 into the system, stores exactly 8,000 in the proper location in the ware-house, and puts the other 72,000 units of your hottest selling product at the back of the warehouse reserved for discontinued inventory.

Each of these events can happen, and each can cause a real, unexpected, and unpredictable turbulent impact to your supply chain. Are you ready for it? Can you react and adapt when it does?